Towards a Global Referendum
Every society lives inside rules inherited from the past. Constitutions, laws, contracts, customs, institutions and treaties are messages from one generation to another. They contain accumulated knowledge about how people have learned to live together. This inheritance is one of civilization’s great achievements. Without it, every generation would have to start again. But inheritance has … Read more
Scaling the village’s information economy is possible because of AI. Here´s why AI belongs in democracy — and where, exactly, it belongs. The bridge and the river Imagine a village of a hundred and fifty people deciding whether to build a bridge across the river that runs past their houses. The decision is not hard … Read more
Part 3 of 3: Symbiotic Intelligence Theory Part 1 described the problem: hierarchy and market have formed a self-reinforcing alliance that colonizes community, democracy, and the natural ecosystem itself. Part 2 identified the mechanism: the instrument chosen to achieve a goal tends to colonize the logic of that goal, in proportion to its speed and … Read more
Part 2 of 3: Symbiotic Intelligence Theory What does it mean that the instruments trump the goals? In Part 1, we described how two of Malone’s five collective intelligences—market and hierarchy—have formed an alliance that systematically colonizes community and democracy. But describing a pattern is not the same as explaining it. Why does this happen? … Read more
Part 1 of 3: Symbiotic Intelligence Theory Mars 14, 2026, Jürgen Habermas died at 96. For over four decades, his most urgent warning went largely unheeded: that the system — his term for the combined logic of markets and state bureaucracies — was colonizing the “lifeworld“, the realm of human meaning, culture, and community. He … Read more
A new political concept is coined: Pragmarchy. Modern political thought offers us a familiar binary. On one side stands autocracy; concentrated, efficient, and dangerously unaccountable. On the other stands what Robert Dahl termed polyarchy. In this system, many people have a say. However, that say is filtered through representatives. These representatives are chosen at intervals … Read more
For decades, local governments across the Western world have been shaped by New Public Management (NPM). While NPM brought efficiency gains, it also introduced a cold and transactional side effect. It turned citizens into “customers” and civil servants into “service providers.” In this model, democracy becomes a vending machine — you pay your taxes, and … Read more
Both physical meetings and technology are essential for Peer Democracy. There is a common misconception that digital democracy is about replacing human contact with screens. This prejudice suggests that making political decisions online means preferring gadgets over conversation and community. Peer Democracy is based on the exact opposite. It relies on research into how humans … Read more
On the 14th of February, 2026, something historic happened in a town just north of Stockholm. A new political party was born—and it’s arrived without a name. Vallentine’s Day: Democracy’s First Date At 11:00 AM, people gathered at Vallentuna torg (the center of the square) to do something unprecedented. They founded a political party publicly … Read more
Olof Palme and Anna Lindh envisioned “Living Citizenship” focused on citizens, not institutions. Peer Democracy, emerging 40 years later, allows individuals to vote annually on one selected issue, enhancing engagement and expertise. This model resolves the competence gap in decision-making, promoting a more informed and participatory democracy through a scalable app.